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Pokémon Learning League

Pokémon Learning League logo with the Mission Guides.

The Pokémon Learning League was a web-based educational series that used the main characters from the Pokémon anime to teach students in the areas of science, math, language arts, and life skills. The site was aimed at American children in grades three to six. The site was free when it was first set up in the Fall of 2006 but was later only viewable through a paid subscription service after January 1, 2007. On August 1, 2008 the site stopped taking new subscribers, and it now redirects to Pokémon.com.

It should be noted that there are many variations from the main anime canon, including the existence of the PokéPilot and going to different regions in each episode. Additionally, the fourth wall was often broken by the characters either asking for help or saying thank you to the person doing the lesson.
The animation used for the website was done using Adobe Flash.

Contents

Mission Guides

The Mission Guides are characters created specifically for the Pokémon Learning League to assist the student and the characters in the four types of subject matter. As such, they don't appear in any media outside of the Pokémon Learning League.

Lessons

Lessons in the Pokémon Learning League are divided up into three parts.

Watch

In the Watch segments, students are introduced to one or more characters from the Pokémon anime who have a problem. They then turn to the PokéPilot (and thus, the Mission Guide for that particular content area) to help them solve their problem.

Try

In the Try segments, students follow a guided practice along with the characters from the Watch segment. The Try segment reinforces the lesson taught in Watch, often mirroring the order that the process was followed there.

Apply

In the Apply segments, students play a game on their own (with minimal interference from the Mission Guide or any character) and apply the skill or skills that they have been taught. The Apply segments often end in a short video that shows the anime characters solving their problem.

None of the Pokémon were voiced by their Japanese voice actors, including Pikachu.

All of the episodes of the Learning League are non-canon from the main anime series. For example, there are some episodes that are set in the Hoenn region, the two-part Media being set in Goldenrod City even though May and Max haven't been there before, having some that are centered on Misty or having some other character, like Brawly and Roxanne, making an appearance.

Misty's skin color is different on the site. Her skin has a white color to it, while in the anime, her skin is the regular peach color.

In some episodes, the characters will sometimes do something they normally wouldn't do or act out of character (such as Brock in the Making Friends episode or Ash in the Self-Control episode).

Some of the lessons would now be out-of-date because of some of the content since having been changed or updated, like the Food Pyramid or Solar System lessons.

The amount of shading on the characters would change each episode. For example, Misty would have some shading in one episode, and then have little to no shading in another.

The company 360KID is responsible for writing the lesson content, developing the scripts, and creating the 140 animated edVideos. All back-end database work was developed by Entropy Multimedia.

All art, brand direction, and approvals came to 360KID from Pokémon Japan.

The website had no music to any of the episodes and utilized sound effects that were different from the main anime.

Since 2009, only three of the episodes have been found online but they are all fragmented. Two of the episodes were found to be uploaded by one user on Newgrounds (with the one of the two episodes being visually edited) and another episode was found on Comdotgame but most of the interactive parts of the episode no longer function.